If we’ve learned nothing else over the past several years, it’s that change is inevitable. A global pandemic erupts, and suddenly the world changes overnight, with or without you. Ironically, companies have turned to technology to deal with these rapid changes. I say ironically because technology just breeds more change as systems must be perpetually upgraded, migrated and deprecated as new technologies are introduced.
We’ve watched companies spend vast amounts of resources migrating their on-prem environments to the cloud to attain greater agility, scalability, and resiliency. They’ve adapted hybrid work strategies to grant employees greater work flexibility. Some have ventured into new markets to take advantage of new opportunities and reach new customers while implementing new technology solutions to reach their existing ones. Change has indeed become eternal.Â
The Necessity of Change Management Strategies
To succeed today, you need to manage change, or it will manage you. That’s where a change management strategy comes into play. Think of it as a response plan that outlines how your organization will address the inevitable changes that will undoubtedly come about. By creating a formal change management strategy, your organization can better identify when change is necessary, minimize the possible risk of implementing it and monitor the effects of that change to ensure that the outcomes match the initial expectations.Â
The Need for Data Security
Another thing that remains constant is the need to protect your company’s data. The purpose of data security is to protect your organization’s digital information from unauthorized access that could potentially compromise it. This compromise could involve theft by external or internal parties for espionage or nefarious purposes.Â
Data can also be corrupted by ransomware or other malware attacks to make it unusable. Data security also includes the prevention of accidental deletion or leakage. All of these security objectives involve restricting access using strategies such as network segmentation, identity and access management (IAM) that adheres to the principle of least privilege (PoLP), and active monitoring, to name a few.Â
Data Security for Mergers and Acquisition
There may be no bigger change imposed on a business than dealing with the ramifications of a contractual merger or acquisition. This involves merging different corporate cultures, employee teams and system technology platforms. One of the primary objectives of these highly involved processes is to acquire the proprietary innovation of another company, but unfortunately, you also procure the problems of that company.Â
A prime example was the acquisition of Yahoo by Verizon in 2016. Shortly after the deal was announced, it came to light that Yahoo had suffered two data breaches that collectively compromised more than one billion accounts. While Verizon went ahead with the acquisition, it did negotiate a discount of $350 million to compensate Verizon for the associated costs and damages it would inherit through the deal.Â
Concerns over cybersecurity have become a common cancellation reason for planned acquisitions over the past decade. Conducting a risk profile of an acquisition target is now part of the due diligence process for these highly complex business transactions. The discovery process begins with finding out just what type of data the target company is in possession of and what the historical ownership of that data is.Â
The due diligence process also includes the review and assessment of that company’s data security strategies, control procedures, and security tools used to protect that data. It will also include an investigation into any prior incidents or breaches in which data may have been compromised. The unexpected discovery of a previous data breach can result in heavy losses to the acquiring organization due to notification, forensic and litigation costs, not to mention the long-term consequences due to reputational damage, consumer trust degradation and brand erosion.Â
Even in the absence of legacy data security concerns, there remains the ordeal of ensuring that data is not compromised during the long process of merging multiple data sets, applications, and intellectual property all together. Security strategies must be conceived and implemented to prevent security holes and data leaks during this vulnerable progression.Â
See More: Data Privacy Day 2023: 13 Experts Share Data Protection Best PracticesÂ
Modifying Data Security Strategies for New System Platforms
The cloud offers unique benefits over traditional on-prem platforms, but native-cloud security is also different. While ingress traffic is blocked by default like a traditional perimeter network, egress traffic is allowed to exit the cloud in an unrestricted fashion as public cloud vendors must leave egress channels open to accommodate whatever apps a customer may upload.Â
This opens the door for accidental cloud data leaks, which is a common phenomenon today. Web APIs continue to be a major source of vulnerability that hackers can easily exploit if left unprotected. Once an API is compromised, a hacker can use the application to access its underlying database and exfiltrate the data. Companies that want to leverage new system platforms and technologies must ensure they have the strategies in place to secure their data.
Dramatic Changes in Personnel
At the outset of the pandemic, we saw many companies undergo an aggressive hiring spree to secure talent to deal with the changing business climate at the time. Today, many of those same companies are now laying off those excess workers. Quick and dramatic changes within a company’s workforce can open the door to security holes and malicious intent.Â
As employees are added rapidly, it can be tempting for companies to hasten the onboarding process and not take the time to properly restrict their access to data and other digital resources. As workers are let go, user accounts can be left enabled accidentally, leaving these dormant accounts vulnerable to compromise by an external threat actor. Disgruntled employees may attempt to steal or damage data during this highly emotional experience. Strategies must be in place to secure company data during these processes during any large-scale workforce transition.Â
See More: Homomorphic Encryption: How It Changes the Way We Protect Data
Conclusion
Change is indeed constant, but so is the need to secure your company’s data. Organizations, just like individuals, are most susceptible to attack during periods of great change. Change brings forth stress, unfamiliarity, and uncertainty, and professional cybercriminals take advantage of all of them. Regardless of the changes initiated by your company, the reliance on data will only perpetuate further, which is why data security must be an integral part of an organization’s change management strategy.Â
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